


An Affair

by elijah_was_a_prophet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/pseuds/elijah_was_a_prophet
Relationships: Antonin Dolohov/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Fic In A Box





	An Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



In the year 1968, on the eve of a great ideological war that would soon sweep the entire Wizarding world into a new era of chaos and Pureblood decimation, Antonin Dolohov put on his formal robes and prepared to go to a wedding at the  county manor of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. It had to be a summer wedding, since they were still due to go to Hogwarts when the autumn came. Only a few weeks prior they’d had a birthday celebration for Bellatrix and now she was to be married, via arrangement and consideration of bloodlines. Another bond to be struck between the Black and Lestrange families. And a social event to be hosted, to examine the various standings, to idly chat and compete in that strange way that all aristocrats did, vying for a slightly higher edge over their neighbors. The Dolohov family had always been among the minor ones, and for as much as Antonin might have loved Bellatrix, she was far above his station. His only good traits were his blood status and his name.

The  Dolohovs apparated to the meeting-place on the edge of the Black estate, where they were greeted and then escorted by a house elf in a freshly laundered tea towel. Several other families had already arrived and were taking advantage of the refreshments. There were the Goyles, the Crabbes, the Notts, and then the old familiar face of Corban Yaxley, standing with his extended relations. Antonin made his way over, knowing that the gap between their families was narrow enough to make any conversation a disregarded curiosity. He’d have liked to talk to Bellatrix, but seeing the bride in her wedding gown before the ceremony was a taboo none would break.

“Yaxley,” he said in greeting.

“Antonin. How nice to see you here, on this happy occasion. The binding of two families into one, closer whole.” First name basis. A subtle reminder of their difference in status. Ambrosius Yaxley, who had been watching Antonin approach as if he was a mangy cat, heard the usage and turned away instead of continuing to glare. 

“You know the Blacks and the  Lestranges have got enough ties to make a cat’s cradle, Yaxley.”

“Don’t be so loud. If you want to talk sedition, let’s stand under the linden and drink punch while we do it.”

Another house elf was serving orange punch in small cut-crystal glasses behind one of the long banquet tables. The entire service was to be held inside, but until the moment when the minister would open the double doors into the great hall, they would have to wait in the summer heat. Druella was probably enjoying that fact; it was no secret that she disliked a large portion of the attendees for the judgment that had been brought upon her when she’d married Cygnus all those years ago. That was fine for her, sitting in a cool room inside, but in black velvet robes even the shade was stifling.

“It’s not sedition, it’s fact,” Antonin argued while he fanned his face. It did nothing to  alleviate the heat. “All Pureblood families are at least second cousins.”

“Not the Malfoys. They enjoy adding an occasional half-breed to the family. Preserves the genetic strength, they claim.”

“That makes them perceptive, not blood traitors. Imagine if the Greengrass family could stop their curse, with just a hint of impure blood. If it’s to preserve the line then I don’t see the harm.”

“If there were a drop of belladonna in your cup, Antonin, would you still drink it?”

He paused, considering. “Better in the Greengrass cup than in mine.”

“A fair point. But I think you object to this marriage for reasons far more passionate than arguments of health and hardiness.”

“I don’t object,” he protested. “I am not a man who holds false hope, Corban Yaxley. Even if I were to marry her it would ruin her reputation and the reputation of both our families. This is the way we knew it would always be. She and I have always remained in the real world, not fantastic novels of romance and drama where the man steals his bride and their families suddenly change their minds.”

“But do you still love her?”

“Yes. We think Rodolphus might be willing to come to a suitable arrangement, if it comes to that.”

Suddenly the heat of the day felt quite oppressive. This marriage was an unwanted burden on them both, and Antonin had no idea how  Rodolphus felt, marrying a girl he’d seen kissing another mere  months before. How happy Antonin and Bellatrix had both felt then, in the spring term of their sixth year and feeling invincible. When he’d received the wedding invitation he’d written to her, immediately begging to know whether it was true. She sent back a note with one fatal word.

_ Yes. _

“It wasn’t uncommon to have affairs in the old days,” Corban said. “It’s a natural consequence of political marriage.”

“In the old days we didn’t have Squibs clamoring for rights and half-blood cousins at every wedding. The Black family seems quite convinced that Bellatrix is enamored with their son. And considering how much talk gets passed around I’d rather love her from afar than bring everyone into a scandal. My social position is already precarious.”

“The Death Eaters. It’d be too late for the sake of you and Bellatrix, but if you wanted to remain in the same circles there’s always room for a dedicated blood loyalist.”

Before Antonin could inquire further the doors to the main hall were opened and he returned to his family, sitting alongside his parents and sister in one of the far-back rows of chairs. Bellatrix and  Rodolphus were already standing up front, she in white beaded robes with a floor length veil and he in fine velvet black ones accented with crow’s feathers. A lovely pureblood couple.

Once all the general tittering and last bits of conversation were silenced the  minister began. Purebloods hadn’t adopted the general Muggle or even Wizarding marriage ceremonies, instead using a variant that dated back to before Hadrian’s Wall. Only the goblin banks and property-inheritors recognized the marriages as binding, as the Ministry required a license, but Pureblood thought held that the Ministry was an institute for blood traitors, half-bloods, and  Muggleborns . They could make regulations as they pleased, but as long as Gringotts and the family wards kept records of marriage they didn’t really care.

Antonin kept listless watch as the minister narrated his way through a series of archaic vows. First a promise to the groom’s family that the bride would keep a good house, serve her husband always, and bear him many children. Then a promise in return that the bride would receive a comfortable house, never go barefoot or hungry, and be treated well as fit a lady of her station. Their families agreed to never engage in any of the duels which had once plagued formal wizarding society, and they swore a mutual pledge to take revenge on each other’s enemies and host their allies.

It was all quite nice, if any of it had ever actually been followed, and soon Antonin was watching the lights instead of the bride and groom. The pair were handfasted, made to drink wine, and exchanged rings. By the time they kissed the entire crowd was shifting, bored but unwilling to make much of a scene.

“If everyone will head to the dining room ,” Druella said while she followed Bellatrix and  Rodolphus out. “This way, now, and your seats have your names on them.”

They’d done the reception room up in floating candles and a variety of fresh flowers, which was quite simple compared to the typical pureblood wedding but suited an event which had been put together so quickly. The  Doholov family table was sat underneath a massive spray of foxgloves and had to share with the Carrows, including a cantankerous great-aunt who  as soon as she sat down took her wooden leg off and propped it up on an urn.

“Good afternoon to you,” Antonin said to Alecto. She and her brother glowered. They were only third years, and had the teenage sulkiness of someone who didn’t want to be there but also couldn’t stand to be excluded like a child for yet another year. 

Up at the high table sat Bellatrix and her new husband, flanked by the Black members of her line on the right and the Lestrange members of his line on the left. In practice this meant parents and grandparents. Bellatrix’s sisters and  Rodolphus ’ brother had been stuck at a table together to look sullen. Sullen was a popular look in the room, mostly from people around Antonin’s age who thought that their marriage season would be a few years delayed.

“At this rate we’ll have to start looking for Alecto a husband now,” Flora Carrow was saying to Antonin’s father. “Marriage so early! You don’t suspect-” She mouthed the last word,  _ pregnant _ .

“I wouldn’t dare to think it. Bellatrix wouldn’t let herself get in such a situation.”

Antonin almost agreed, then remembered that was a piece of knowledge he shouldn’t have and so returned to looking at his water glass. Once everyone was seated, Pollux Black stood from his seat on the furthest right and raised a glass.

“To the marriage of my dear great-granddaughter, and to the happy couple!”

Everyone in the room raised their suddenly-filled wineglasses in agreement.

“To the Most Noble House of Black, and to the Most Noble House of Lestrange!”

Another hurrah, and then the room drank as one. 

“A fine vintage,” Antonin’s father said. He thought of himself as a sommelier and often discussed wine during family events to people who were trying merely to get inebriated and endure the proceedings. In addition to the self-refilling stemware menus had been placed at their table settings; to receive an item one had only to ask. It was very advanced catering magic, and had probably cost the Blacks a good chunk of Galleons.

“Salmon and asparagus!” Antonin commanded, and there it was,  buttered and steaming. He watched the top table while he ate, Bellatrix only poking at her food and talking quietly with Rodolphus. When the autumn  came they’d be one of only two married couples in the seventh year- the Notts were marrying off one of their daughters to a Quackenbush in July, eager to be done with the strain of paying for their son and six daughters’ weddings.

The afternoon passed in a haze of formality. A string quartet of invisible musicians was brought out, and they played a stately waltz for Bellatrix and  Rodolphus ’ first dance. It was hesitant, but not unpracticed, and Antonin thought of the Yule Ball the year prior where he’d been able to dance with her underneath the twelve great trees. Now he was doing an ungainly two-step with Hestia Carrow, who seemed to delight in stabbing her peg leg into his boot and muttering darkly about her dislike of weddings where there wasn’t an open bar.

By the early evening proceedings had spread out. The glass side doors out into the gardens had been opened, so guests could socialize in the warm air, and several of the youngest attendees had fallen asleep in a pile of cloaks on the patio benches. Antonin took the opportunity to escape out into the roses and have a moment’s peace.

“Antonin?” said a soft voice behind him. He turned and saw Bellatrix, veil long gone and dress pinned up so she could walk without dragging the train. A bit of hair had fallen loose from its style and he tucked it behind her ear, gaze trained upward to catch any interlopers.

“You shouldn’t be seen with me,” he said. “Go. Find Rodolphus.”

“He’s off with one of the Greengrass sisters,” she replied. “Antonin, everyone knows what this wedding’s all about.”

“Flora Carrow asked if you were pregnant.”

“As if I’d ever- ooh, that witch should mind her own business before I remind her.”

“Nobody else thought it was true. She is quite a gossip.”

His hand hadn’t moved from the side of her face and she leaned into it and sighed. “Weddings are exhausting, especially when they’re your own.”

“It’s a lovely one.”

“Right, Mumsy had fits over getting everything settled. Andromeda says at this rate she’d rather marry a Mudblood then put up with all of the organizing.”

“She wouldn’t  _ dare.” _

“She’s always had a rebellious side. And she’s never cared about blood as much as she should.”

Her laugh followed, a cackling one from high in her chest. Antonin pulled her close on a whim and felt the laugh against his chest. He was overwhelmed by affection for a moment, with no place to put it, and no words to explain to her how he felt except those which would destroy everything.

“I would have liked to marry you someday,” he whispered. “Even if it wasn’t right.”

“Don’t talk about what could have been. What’s done is done.”

She didn’t leave his arms, however, and her breathing slowed as they swayed side to side in their hidden corner of the garden. 

“Is anybody nearby?”

“Nobody comes this far back, but we can go into the hedges if you’re worried. They haven’t seen a good pruning in years.”

Bellatrix took the lead. Down the path they went, deeper into the rose trellises and through a gazebo into the back edges of where the estate met the woods. The lights of the manor faded as they walked, and no sound could be heard save the crickets and their own breathing. Moonlight made the frizzy wispy bits of Bellatrix’s hair glow silver. It  shone off her ring and the highlights in her eyes. 

It reminded him of the first time they’d kissed, in fifth year on the grounds of Hogwarts by the lake. It’d been late in the evening after a long weekend day of practicing charms for their O.W.L. practical examinations. They’d started out with the entire group on the shore, Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers and the trio of Rosier-Wilkes-Snape all working at their own studies. But by the time the sun set it’d been just him and Bellatrix, sitting in the shade of a massive oak.

He’d felt bold that year, seen the way she watched him, and so alone by the Great Lake he’d kissed her to try and express that singular feeling of wanting to be closer before the world and what was right got in the way. Maybe that’s why he was following her to the back of the gardens, instead of resisting and making her go back to where she belonged, with her new husband. Seeing her now and seeing her then he’d been struck by how light travelled on her face, how she had an even and noble way of holding herself. She was a naturally proud person, and that confidence was what enraptured him. 

“You look beautiful,” he said, and she smiled.

“ Of course I do. I haven’t changed my appearance since you last said that. But thank you, it’s nice to be reminded.”

It made him laugh, how frank she could be, and she laughed at her own joke. They wrapped up in one another again, cheek to cheek and chest to chest, mirthful in the way only two people at total ease with one another could be. 

“Kiss me,” she dared him. “ Rodolphus shouldn’t be the only one allowed to stray.”

He tipped her chin up and pressed their lips together, like he had the first time and so many times afterwards. It’d become a bit of the joke in the Slytherin common room as to where someone would catch Bellatrix and Antonin snogging next, but given the general hormonal state of the age it wasn’t to be unexpected. Now, though, in the gardens it felt like an omen.

“Something is coming,” he told her. “You can feel the tension in the air.”

“It’s the squibs, causing trouble. They can’t continue for much longer. Our pureblood traditions have to be  maintained at all costs.”

The image came to Antonin, of an old forest being burned to clear the deadwood and cause the cones to drop their seeds. A great blaze it would be this time, bloodlines purified against the hot iron. War, and what comes with it. He had reason to fear war, after Grindelwald had cut a swathe across Europe and seemed poised to threaten Britan until the duel with Dumbledore. Grindelwald had cost him a large part of his family, as brother set on brother and used the Dark Arts as a deciding coinflip.

“When the war starts,” he began, speaking as if war was inevitable, “where will you be?”

“There is a Lord who’s been gathering support from the pureblood families. They say he’s descended from  Salazar Slytherin himself. If there’s war, it’ll be his move. Some of my cousins have already pledged their loyalty to him, and gotten his mark.”

“He brands them?”

“With his mark. Rabastan says he’s already planning to get one, and that if you were to pull up the sleeves of several of the other purebloods that you’d see a snake and a skull. Their Lord’s symbol.”

It seemed like something fantastic and old-fashioned, getting a mark of loyalty imprinted directly onto one’s skin. And the motivation was shaky, at least to Antonin. There were other, invisible ways of marking followers, magical oaths that could slowly kill anyone who strayed, vows that when broken broke wands. The Dark Arts were far more varied than the simple defense classes at Hogwarts covered; where those  Muggleborns and half-bloods saw danger purebloods saw the traditions of their houses.

Among the  Doholovs , for example, there had been a spell that produced a bolt of violet fire that damaged the fine parts of the lungs. No curse could cause instant death other than Avada  Kedavra , but there was no limit to the curses which caused slow death and permanent illness. He avoided speaking the incantation for the violet fire curse aloud so that no one would steal it, a family secret that had been smuggled across oceans and only used in those times of greatest need. 

The dark was not scary if you understood it, and that was why he felt so at ease in the deep and wild shadows away from the lights of the manor. There was a darkness inside Bellatrix, too, something wild which had drawn him to her. He wanted to understand that high cackling laugh and those mercurial moods unlike those of  Andromeda and Narcissa.

“Bellatrix!” someone yelled from over a privet. Antonin and Bellatrix shoved apart, startled. The voice continued. “Bellatrix! Why did you come so far out here?”

It was Yaxley.

“Why’s that any of your business?” Bellatrix replied. 

“Your mother’s looking for you. It’s time to paint the portrait.”

Bellatrix sighed and with a pop, disappeared. Yaxley came around the hedge and started when he saw Antonin standing there. In one hand he held a biscuit.

“The nerve, Antonin.”

“She wanted to take me back here. I followed. According to her  Rodolphus went off with one of the Greengrass sisters as soon as the back doors opened. We didn’t do anything but kiss.”

“On her wedding day.”

“To a man she isn’t in love with. I don’t think he’d be terribly put off if he knew.”

Yaxley shook his head and sat on a concrete bench. “You’re lucky it was me they sent looking, and not one of those Black cousins. They’d have your head on a skewer if they caught you out here with her.”

“At Hogwarts they were fond of glaring. I think most of the family under a certain age knew about me and Bella’s relationship.”

There had been a couple of shoves and thinly veiled threats, but it had been understood that they’d never make a move. To try and duel another family over something so insignificant would bring more shame than if they allowed the relationship to continue and did not challenge it. Marriage was never on the table, and there was something harmless about allowing a fun school dalliance before the  real-world concern of alliances.

But their chance had been cut too soon, with this sudden wedding that they both had known nothing of on the train back from their sixth year. Sitting in the garden, Antonin dropped his head into his hands and thought on how deeply unfair things sometimes were, even when they were right.

“Yaxley, if I were to get married tomorrow, who do you think it would be to?”

“One of the Carrow cousins from up north, or maybe the last couple of  Fawcetts if they ever leave their sour old mansion again. Your prospects are slim, if you want to marry proper.”

“Little more than a title, I’ve got. And not even a good one at that.”

“Then it’s your job to elevate the family. Make something of that name, Antonin.”

Make something of the name, he thought. There weren’t many ways to elevate one’s status. One way was by becoming an artist or intellectual of great note, but Antonin had spent enough years of education to know that wasn’t in his future. There was becoming wealthy and buying one’s way into a good marriage, but that was regarded as tasteless and was the reason that families such as the  Rosiers weren’t regarded as highly as the  Lestranges or Blacks. And then there was earning glory through war, through protecting the home front from the threats that stood all around. Be a courageous man and many families would compete to have such a brave son in law take their daughters.

War, that’d be the key.

“Do you know anything about the Death Eaters?”

“My cousin’s one of them, but that’s about it.”

“I think after Hogwarts I’d like to join. Their mission is noble, I think, and there’s no harm in defending our traditions when they’ve been at such stake.”

Yaxley hummed. “It seems like it’s getting violent. You’re a good duelist, but if the Ministry gets involved then there’s no telling how far they’ll take it.”

“The Ministry does not serve our needs, Corban! It serves the needs of the blood traitors it employs and the  Muggleborns who think an accident of birth puts them at the same level as our houses. A government for the wizarding world should serve it, not hinder its ways and drag it down. Have you seen the bans they’ve been putting on so called Dark Magic?” He stood, growing heated. “Magic that is used to harm is no darker than any other magic. We should not have to put up these false barriers just because some half-blood is uncomfortable knowing that there are ways to kill that are not banned.”

“I agree,” Yaxley said. “But are you willing to die for it?”

“People have died for less and for worse. If that is fate, then so be it. I see no dishonor in fighting for what we know is right.”

“Then I will join you,” Yaxley said. “I don’t want to tell my children that I stood by during a war and let the Ministry walk on our traditions like so much dirt.”

“Then we are decided.”

They shook hands there in the garden, but Antonin’s thoughts were turned towards Bellatrix. To fight alongside her, to protect her in battle- it was a noble thing and he would be proud to do it. And maybe, if not in name, he’d prove himself worthy to love someone of the Black family, and be her companion if not her husband. It was a risk he was willing to take, and a risk that would see his name written down in the registry of pure families as a credit to his name and to the Pureblood community.  _ In adversity comes strength _ , the family motto said, and the well of strength in his heart would stay full as long as he had that image of Bellatrix in the moonlight held within it.


End file.
